Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
As a bit of an aside though, I wonder about xG. I see it posted after a lot of games in various places and while the concept makes sense, it seems like it’s off a lot of the time. I’m not sure if you could use that reliably to predict standings or outcomes for the league?
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It's better at predicting how a team will do in future, then as to what they've done to now
It's not perfect because different individuals are better finishers than others, messi and son are two who outperform it a lot iirc, but it's basically looking at where the shot was from, what type of shot it was (normal, volley, header etc.), where it came from (I.e is it from a cross), things like that.
So say in open play, a header from the penalty spot, there's been 100 of them all time, and 14 went in. So a header from the spot is considered worth 0.14xg. But obviously its tracked over thousands and thousands of games, which is why an elite striker will usually outperform theirs because your comparing it to every shot tracked from that area, but not everyone has their talent.
It's better than possession, or shots attempted, or shots on target, because it shows shot quality.